Stimulus money goes overseas

Senate Democrats are furious that the vast majority of grants from the clean-energy program from last year’s stimulus have been awarded to foreign companies.

Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana announced Wednesday a new initiative to require the "Buy America" provision of the stimulus to all programs, not just the government ones. A study done by the Investigative Reporting Workshop found that 79 percent of the $2 billion in clean-energy grants allocated since Sept. 1, 2009, has gone to foreign wind companies.

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"We are demanding the Obama administration suspend this program immediately ... [and] indefinitely," Schumer said. "We are sending a letter to Secretary [Timothy] Geithner asking him to halt all payouts for this program until we in Congress can go back and fix this law."

The senators highlighted a wind farm project in west Texas, which received stimulus aid and is projected to create 3,000 jobs in China and a tenth as many in the United States.

"Some of us complained about this to the administration back in November when this project was first announced, so it's not that they don't know about it, but the Energy Department in their reply said they were powerless to stop it because projects like this are automatically eligible for the grants. That answer is not good enough," Schumer said. "The goal of the stimulus is to strengthen the American economy, and that means creating jobs here in the U.S. not in China."

But the Department of Energy responded Wednesday afternoon, saying that the senators' message was misleading and that funding goes only to projects built in the United States and that those projects, in turn, spur economic growth. They say wind turbines built domestically — regardless of where some of the parts are manufactured — will create more demand for clean-energy manufacturing.

"We will work with Congress on any proposal to further improve this program, but suspending it now would cause immediate layoffs of American workers at American manufacturing plants," said Department of Energy spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. "Other countries are not pressing the pause button on clean energy industries and they will move quickly to capture America's share of the global market while we sit on the sidelines."

By rewriting the section of the stimulus act dealing with clean-energy projects, the senators hope to circumvent the Obama administration and force the grants to be awarded to U.S. companies.

The Democrats believe the initiative would garner broad bipartisan support, with Schumer adding that they "would try to add something as soon as possible," given the 10 percent domestic unemployment rate and the stated objectives of the Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

They also seek to extend the scope of "Buy America" to the entire stimulus legislation. Brown expressed his dismay at a Swedish company's press release distributed recently after it was commissioned to produce stemware for the State Department — a bid an Ohio company lost.

"It's one issue after another, after another," Brown said. "It's time our government stood on the side of American workers."